San Jose reports on progress of graffiti program

San Jose officials say graffiti abatement will cost more than they had anticipated this year, prompting new questions at City Hall about work recently outsourced to a private contractor in a bid to improve efficiency.

The City Council on Tuesday will review the effectiveness of the graffiti control contract, which has drawn heightened scrutiny at a time when politically influential public employee unions are battling City Hall over pay and benefit cuts and threats to outsource more work.

But city officials defended the contract with Los Angeles-based Graffiti Protective Coatings. While it will cost about $100,000 more in the current budget year than they had hoped, city officials said that's because there's been a third more graffiti than they expected, and that it will still cost about $500,000 less than keeping the work in-house.

"We'll still be realizing a significant savings," said Julie Edmonds-Mares, the acting director of Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services, which oversees the anti-graffiti program.

Not everyone at City Hall is satisfied. Councilman Xavier Campos, who represents the East San Jose area that has been among the hardest hit by taggers, said that "graffiti has certainly not decreased in our neighborhoods."

"I want our new anti-graffiti program to be successful," Campos said. "My concerns stem from the unanswered questions of the efficiency of the new contractor's work. If we approve a funding increase that will most likely be a substantial amount, then I need to make sure the taxpayers of San Jose will reap the benefits. I just don't believe they have been since the new contractor took over."

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The city last year hired GPC on a five-year, $3.1 million contract through June 2016, with a yearly cost of about $633,000 a year. Edmonds-Mares said this year's bill will be about $800,000, but that "will be partially offset by savings in materials and personnel costs in the same budget" and will be absorbed by the department through "careful management of non-personnel" expenses without additional funding requests.

The city saw a spike in graffiti-tagging activity last year to some 2.6 million square feet, Edmonds-Mares said. City officials had assumed 1.5 million square feet when budgeting cleanup costs for the current year, a figure slightly higher than the previous year. Actual volume this year, however, is expected to be closer to 2 million square feet.

Edmonds-Mares said she's thrilled with the new contractor's work, which has included using a toll-free hotline and mobile-phone application for reporting graffiti, and donated training and supplies for volunteers who want to help blot out tags.

"They're going above and beyond anything that the contract requires them to do because they really care about keeping our city graffiti-free," Edmonds-Mares said.

Some have suggested that because the city is paying GPC 40 cents per square foot of graffiti cleaned up, the contractor has a financial incentive to inflate figures to boost payments. GPC general manager Barry Steinhart was not available for comment.

But Edmonds-Mares said that the city has been able to check GPC's reported cleanup efforts because they are photographed and documented to a greater extent than had been the case before, when the city simply estimated how much tagging it covered up by how much paint was used.

Out of 25,000 work orders since July, Edmonds-Mares said, the city found only three in which the square-footage cleaned was over-reported, either by the contractor or due to a technical error. In each case, she said, GPC acknowledged the error and credited the city. She also noted that the city found 20 work orders in which the square footage was underreported in the city's favor.

Many who have volunteered to help the city clean up graffiti in their neighborhoods have been impressed with GPC's work.

John Allen had spent years volunteering to help blot graffiti from the College Park neighborhood where he's a community leader, and had felt it was an endless and perhaps hopeless battle.

But these days, when Allen spots a tag, he can zap the image and location with his smartphone and send it to GPC. Within hours, he said, he gets a message that it's gone.

"I'd walk out there and look at it and sure enough, it's done," Allen said. "I'm just pleased as punch. I think it's a fantastic system."

A free "San Jose Clean" application allows residents with smartphones to point, click and send photos and reports of graffiti, litter and city park conditions. The city currently has 940 registered users who have filed 1,531 reports this year. Search for the application in Google Play for Droid-type phones and the iPhone App Store for iPhones.